Intel
thundered into the week of the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, with its
official announcement
of its second-generation Core i-Series lineup, based on the company's new
architecture Sandy Bridge. Today, AMD has is countering with
a new processor family aimed at Intel’s popular Atom processor and low-end Sandy Bridge processors.

The company today officially
announced the availability of its first
Fusion CPUs, which had been in development under the code-name Brazos.
Writes AMD Products Group senior vice president and general manager Rick
Bergman states in a press release, "Fusion processors are, quite simply,
the greatest advancement in processing since the introduction of the x86
architecture more than forty years ago."

The introductory models begin with the power-sipping Ontario lineup,
which has now been officially branded the "C-Series". The C-30
comes with one core, clocked at 1.2 GHz. The C-20 comes with two cores,
clocked at 1.0 GHz. The TDP for both processors is 9 watts.

Next up is Zacate. This code-named lineup has been rebranded
the "E-Series". The E-240 packs a single 1.5 GHz processor
core, while the E-250 packs a pair of cores clocked at 1.6 GHz.

AMD also promises 10+ hour battery life from netbooks sporting its new chips.

A couple of models have already been announced -- the Lenovo
X120e and HP Pavilion dm1 -- and more are reportedly on the way. AMD
promises Brazos netbooks from "Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu,
HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba to announce plans to deliver AMD
Fusion APU-based systems at very compelling value and mainstream price
point."

If AMD can deliver this sounds like its shaping up to be a game changing launch
for the company. Netbooks and budget notebooks are one of the hottest
fields in mobile computing and Intel has long remained virtually unchallenged
in this sector (only a few players like VIA moved small volumes of products
based on Atom competitors). Now AMD looks prepared to change that.

And it has more in store. This week at the 2011 CES it is expected to
launch its "A-Series" lineup, formerly know as Llano.
These notebook Fusion processors are expected to feature a beefier GPU.
AMD's press release for the E-Series and C-Series teased, promising that the
A-Series would deliver 500 Gflops of computing power in a chip. Again
this indicates that while the GPU onboard won't be a superpower, it will likely
outdo Sandy Bridge, whose low-end models will compete with the A-Series.
We won't have the final verdict, though, until official specs and pricing
information airs.

AMD has faced a long and rocky road leading up to 2011. But the timely
release of Fusion is a vindication of the company's vital acquisition of
graphics maker ATI. That acquisition essentially turned around the
company's image, giving it the top volume competitor in a major computer
hardware market. Now it looks to further leverage that acquisition by
combining the products of its two key units -- the CPU and GPU teams. One
thing is for sure -- 2011 should be an exciting year for the netbook and
notebook sector as AMD looks to turn up the heat on market leader Intel.

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